Nature of Heredity. 323 



organs and the essential substance of the germ beromes necessary ' 

 (His), while the transmission of the other kinds of <-haracters do not 

 involve any theoretical difficulties.'"* . . . "It is certainly 

 necessary to have two terms which distinguish shari)ly between the 

 two chief groups of characters — the primary characters which first 

 appear in the f)odv itself, and the secondary ones which owe their 

 appearance to variations in the germ, however such variations 

 may have arisen. We have hitherto been accustometl to i-all the 

 former ' acquired characters,' but we might also call them 

 ' somatogenic,' because they follow from the reaction of the soma 

 under external influences ; while all other characters might be con- 

 trasted as ' bl cist genie,' because they include all those characters in 



the body which have arisen from changes in the germ 



We maintain that the 'somatogenic ' characters cannot be transmitted, 

 or rather, that those who assert that they can be transmitted must 

 furnish the requisite proofs.''! 



These are amongst Weismanns earliest statements on the sub- 

 ject, and are taken fr(jm the only works of his to which 1 at present 

 have access. m\ own librarv having nijt yet arrived fmin \ew Zea- 

 land, while this country appears unfortunately to l)e verv badly sup- 

 plied with biological literature. 



As a delinite and thoroughU well authenticated case ot the 

 'nheritance of an acquired character I can quote the following from 

 Co))e's " Primary Factcjrs of Organic Evolution : 



'■ A female (and very prolilic) (^at, when al)oui half-grown, met 

 with an accident. ' Her line, long tail was trodden on, and had a 

 c(rm],)ound fracture, two vertebrae being .so displaced that they ever 

 after formed a short off-set between the near and far end of the tail, 

 leaving the two out of line. At first 1 noted that out of ever\- litter 

 of kittens .some had a tail with a querl in it. With successive litters 

 the deformity increased, until not a kitten of the old cat had a 

 straight tail, and it grew worse in her progeny until now we have not 

 a cat with a normal tail on the premises (in a cat-poimlation of six 

 or eight, exclusive of young kittens). The tails are now in fact mere 

 stumps, some have a semi-circular sweep sideways, and some have 

 the original querl. Perhaps the deformity was somewhat aggravated 

 by in-and-in breeding and by artificial selection practised l)y mv 

 Chinaman, who. with the per\-ersity of his race, preferred the crooked 

 tails, and thus preserved them in preference to the normal kittens. 

 There are no other abnormally-tailed cats in the neighbourhood.' 



" This is the essential })art of an unpublished letter from that 

 keen observer and eminent scientist. Professor Eugene W. Hilgard, 

 of the University of California. ' 



It is, of cour.se, extremely unusual for mutilations to be inherited, 

 and we ought rather to be surprised that there are any well-authen- 

 ticate<l cases at all of such inheritance on record than that there are 

 so few. No stimulus which has so short duration as part of the 



* tY (77, p. 412. ttYc/Y. p. 413 



